Course Description This course is a thematic study of human activity and the global distribution of these activities. Topics covered will include: global population, migration, culture, language, religion, ethnicity, political geography, development, agriculture, urban patterns, environment, and disasters.
When choosing what map I would like to make, I was looking to find something that would be useful to me in my everyday life like a personal map for outdoor recreation, or crime stats in my neighborhood. When I was looking through and searching the layers I came across Natural Gas Burning plants in Utah. This peaked my interest as this is the area of my degree of Energy Management. So I decided to broaden those layers out to include the entire US. The layers that I found include also areas of Canada and Mexico. There was also available to me layers for Coal Burning Power Plants and Oil/Diesel Burning Power Plants. This has many benefits to see where our natural resources are coming from in comparison to who is using the most and the cost of those resources. Also with in that layer there are 2 ways that you can pin point and graph out those areas. The first is with a marker to pin point the spot of the power plant. I did change up the symbols and colors that was used at first so that it was easier to distinguish between each source and area. The second is with a heat mapping tool. It shows the areas where these fuels come from. From the information I get from the map most of the petroleum power plants are locate in the central to eastern parts of the United States. I went on to the US Energy Information Administration’s[1] website to gather more information on the areas and compare my mapping results with their information. They actually having a mapping system on the site along with other data. The results matched up quite well. The EIA site says, “In 2014, there were about 19,745 individual generators with nameplate generation capacities of at least 1 megawatt (MW) at about 7,677 operational power plants in the United States.” (Frequently Asked Questions, 2016) That is from all sources including the three main ones. The Data[2] from the EIA site suggests that Texas[3] is by far the largest energy producer in the United states. They produce 20.2%. You can see from my map and its layers that much of Texas is a natural gas producer with several Power Plants across the eastern area of the state. And not only that but they are large producers in coal and natural gas as well. It is interesting that the #2 State is Wyoming[4]. They come in at 10.7%. From looking at my map and the date on the EIA site you can see that they are large producers of petroleum. The EIA data also shows they are the #2 State in consumption per capita at 917 Btu and #2 state in expenditures per capita at 9,997. I found it interesting that across the board they were ranked #2. It was also interesting to look at the data on the map and see which states are ranked low for energy production. Well and when I say low I mean there are 3 states and DC that don’t produce any. They have power plants there of course to use the energy but they don’t not actually produce any of the 3 main energy sources we use here in America. My map I see as a useful tool in helping to compare energy statistics across the United States. We are at a time in our country where Energy is a big topic and should be an even larger topic discussed more. We need to look at the data and focus funding on cleaner sources of energy. We need to be more self-sufficient as a country and do our part.
Refelection: So this web mapping tool could be real useful in my program that I am currently taking. I am in the Energy Management Program. I am learning currently how to do energy modeling and this mapping tool would be really great for helping me map the utilities that feed the buildings I will be working on. I have also visited many sites that are sources of green energy. I would love to use a map that would not only show the natural gas/coal plants but that would map all types of green energy sources in the country and in your local area. I have visited a solar farm, wind turbine, water plant and geothermal plants. There are several small plants that would be great to have mapped and help the green energy program by helping others see the growth of the industry and the opportunities that are out there. Other classes have focused on our current problems with energy and how to handle the ever growing demand for energy. This is one of the many problems facing our world as we grow and using this mapping program we can see all of the major utilities and it helps the program better understand the huge task placed on the shoulder of generation to find other ways to create and use our energy more efficiently so that we can save ourselves from the growing problem of pollution we make by producing our energy for our current demand. This web mapping tool is a great opportunity for this program to start mapping and seeing what changes are made in the efforts to improve our energy needs.